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100 Watt 10,000 Lumen LED 'DayMaker' Flashlight Build

jayrob

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Re: 100Watt 10,000 Lumen LED 'DayMaker' Flashlight Build

jay

a bit of feed back and I am not a expert like you but could you push the led harder if you used teks or pelter coolers to try and get some of that heat down. I know about these leds as they are used in shop lights a lot and they put out enough heat to burn you bad if they are on long enough. Second why not cut angled slots in the case to allow some of that heat out as it works its way down just a thought! Lastly the one that I saw made on youboob is made out of angled aluminium tube and uses a 12 volt or some thing like that battery its a big square thing and computer heat sink. i like your design better. any way those are my thoughts

Here's a short video demonstration of how nice the air flows through the tube...

Although I originally had planned on cutting some extra slots, I changed my mind. Don't see the need for any extra slots. :) (adding video to OP)

 
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Re: 100Watt 10,000 Lumen LED 'DayMaker' Flashlight Build

that is nice jay
 

Benm

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Re: 100Watt 10,000 Lumen LED 'DayMaker' Flashlight Build

Really cool build. Looks like you're flooding the target with light, any way to collimate the light beam?

With these leds, not realistically.

Their emitting area is so large it's impossible to focus that light into a narrow beam unless you used a huge reflector or lens.

These things are floodlihgts and good at that. If you want to have a narrow beam light use something with a single emitter (like the 5 watt ones) and use a good reflector and/or lens system with that. I reckon a good old halogen D cell maglite could outperform this light when looking at candela's (i.e. lumens per angle of arc), but so could a cat-annoying $1 laser pointer.
 

jayrob

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Re: 100Watt 10,000 Lumen LED 'DayMaker' Flashlight Build

With these leds, not realistically.

Their emitting area is so large it's impossible to focus that light into a narrow beam unless you used a huge reflector or lens.

These things are floodlihgts and good at that. If you want to have a narrow beam light use something with a single emitter (like the 5 watt ones) and use a good reflector and/or lens system with that. I reckon a good old halogen D cell maglite could outperform this light when looking at candela's (i.e. lumens per angle of arc), but so could a cat-annoying $1 laser pointer.

"...and good at that'.

Yes I'll say!

I really love this thing and can't stop turning it on every chance I get...

1st charge holding up a lot better than I had anticipated.

Also the voltage does not 'sag' at all with this Lipo. (I can test voltage before and during operation right from the charge plug)

Love this thing! :D
 

Benm

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I can imagine it's plenty of fun really - somehting about as bright as a kilowatt halogen worklight but portable :)

It's nice to get some good battery performance on a project like this too, often they are just demonstrations of what can be done and run the batteries flat in 5 minutes or so. Having a battery in there that can power it for over an hour is cool.

I don't know if you considered having selectable power levels, but i think it could be useful to have some way of lowering the power output to say 25 watts or so, making it last the better part of a night on a single charge with a still impressive amount of floodlight.
 

jayrob

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I can imagine it's plenty of fun really - somehting about as bright as a kilowatt halogen worklight but portable :)

It's nice to get some good battery performance on a project like this too, often they are just demonstrations of what can be done and run the batteries flat in 5 minutes or so. Having a battery in there that can power it for over an hour is cool.

I don't know if you considered having selectable power levels, but i think it could be useful to have some way of lowering the power output to say 25 watts or so, making it last the better part of a night on a single charge with a still impressive amount of floodlight.

Hmmm not a bad idea...

It would be fairly easy to make a way to adjust the voltage pot on the driver. Might do that maybe, but probably leave it as is for a while and see how it goes...
 
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Benm

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You could dial down the driver or even use PWM if you wish.

The nice thing with LEDs is that you get the choice, run it 10 times longer at 1/10th the power with 1/10th (or usually a bit more) of the brightness.

Halogen lamps on the other end drop efficiency really quickly when you go below the rated voltage/power level, running one at half the rated electrical power will leave you with <10% of the visible light output.

Running it at 25% would still be a very bright light, and a switch would basically be between 'darn bright work light' and 'light cannon'. Personally i'd put some switch that goes 1%-10%-25%-50%-100% or something on it - just for those cases where 1% is enough for comfortable lighting that doesnt try to set the drapes on fire :D
 

jayrob

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You could dial down the driver or even use PWM if you wish.

The nice thing with LEDs is that you get the choice, run it 10 times longer at 1/10th the power with 1/10th (or usually a bit more) of the brightness.

Halogen lamps on the other end drop efficiency really quickly when you go below the rated voltage/power level, running one at half the rated electrical power will leave you with <10% of the visible light output.

Running it at 25% would still be a very bright light, and a switch would basically be between 'darn bright work light' and 'light cannon'. Personally i'd put some switch that goes 1%-10%-25%-50%-100% or something on it - just for those cases where 1% is enough for comfortable lighting that doesnt try to set the drapes on fire :D

Well not knowing too much about where to put a PWM, I'd probably not attempt that...

It would be nice if I could just put a pot before the LED (after driver) because it is so easy to get to. But in view of having a boost driver, it seems that the best thing would be to turn down the voltage pot which would mean much less current draw from the battery. (but I'm no electronics guy, just speaking on gut instinct)

One thing I did notice with the driver when 'dialing in' the LED with voltage and current meters connected, is that once the current is set at 3 Amps/36 volts, you can try to turn up the voltage pot and it won't go higher because the current is already set...

In other words, you can just turn down the voltage pot for dimming, and then turn it back up without having to worry about over voltage...
 
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Benm

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Should be - don't expect a narrow beam from an emitter that large though, it's just a matter of physics why you need a small emitting area to give a certain beam divergence with a limitation in lens diameter.

As for the dimming: If your driver is current limited at 3 amps but also has an output adjustment voltage you can use that to lower the current reliably. The current limit will always be respected, only downside is that the voltage doesnt have a nice a linear relationship with current or brightness: It will probably change a LOT over a small amount of rotation. There are ways around that problem though, such as using a fixed resistor in series with an adjustable one to get better useful adjustment range.
 

Pman

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With all the stuff you have but this must really be special as you still sound excited about it. Looking forward to seeing the lens addition In a couple weeks I'm guessing.
 
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they sell the whole kit the led the heat sink the focus lens and the reflector for around 15 to twenty bucks on flea bay... I am wondering if it would be possible to used a boost driver to increase the efficiency of it. There has be a way to make it more efficient
 

jayrob

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With all the stuff you have but this must really be special as you still sound excited about it. Looking forward to seeing the lens addition In a couple weeks I'm guessing.


Yes I like it so much that I ordered parts for another... :beer:

I want to see how well that 4" lens will do. Hopefully make it beam. (wide beam)

But I'm guessing that the lens will not fit inside my 4" pipe, so it will be a different build.

This flood is a very useful light though. I will leave this one as is... :)
 
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I want to see how well that 4" lens will do.

You lose half of your light to either side of the lens to start off with.

The same physics apply for LEDs. A bare die is basically a 1 1/3 inch "beam" with a divergence of ~160 degrees. Expanding 3x to 4 inches cuts divergence to ~53 degrees. If you're more familiar with radians That's about 1 radian (1000mRad).

The emitting area is the limitation here. You cannot tame it. Physics will win EVERY time.
 




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